Read the rest here.Investigators say the officer was driving his orange Corvette 94 miles an hour, nearly twice the speed limit, when he collided off-duty with a family’s SUV.
The crash killed a 1-year-old girl who went flying out of the vehicle, according to police. But the Baton Rouge Police Department’s Christopher Manuel will face no criminal charges — not even for speeding, prosecutors said this week.
The news has drawn further scrutiny to the 2017 tragedy that stirred public outrage last year after authorities arrested the dead child’s mother, 21-year-old Brittany Stephens, on suspicion of negligent homicide, saying the baby probably would not have been ejected and killed if Stephens had properly secured the car seat. Authorities have decided not to charge her, East Baton Rouge district attorney Hillar Moore III said.
The choice to prosecute neither Manuel nor Stephens was an agonizing one, Moore told The Washington Post on Friday. But after two years of discussions, he said, prosecutors felt they couldn’t meet the burden of proof for homicide or even a lesser charge like negligent injury for the officer. At the same time, they were loath to go after a young woman whom Moore said has already “punished herself.”
“You never want any officer traveling 94 miles an hour,” he said. “It’s just stupid. It’s dangerous. But when we looked at the law and the facts and the circumstances, we just thought that this was the only reasonable decision to make.”
An attorney for Stephens told The Post he’s troubled by authorities’ handling of the case, though. He has questioned last year’s action against his client, calling it a tactic to muddy responsibility for baby Seyaira’s death. Now, he’s blasting the district attorney for letting the officer off the hook, saying the choice exudes “impropriety” given prosecutors’ close work with police.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2 ... e-charges/
